Sawvell, Burman and conference realignment

[307bball]

This whole saga has a lot of facets to analyze. One of the recurring sentiments I have heard is that the success that Boise St has had is unrealistic as a goal for Wyoming...that BSU is a one of one situation and their success since 2000 or so is a lightning strike level event in that it would be impossible to replicate. I think I agree with that. So, given that BSU level of success is off the table, what level of success gets Wyoming into the cool kids club? If the answer is that we would have had to have had BSU level success....we have already ruled that out.

Let's look at the 4 teams that have announced their departure to the Pac-xx alongside Wyoming....

Total wins in the last 8 non-covid years:
BSU - 68
SDSU - 61
FRES - 56
WY - 53
CSU - 32

Conference Championship games (again, non covid years):
BSU - 5 appearances, 3 victories
SDSU - 2 appearances, 1 victory
FRES - 3 appearances, 2 victories
WYO - 1 appearance, 0 victories
CSU - 0 appearances, 0 victories

Bowls (appearances, wins):
BSU - 6, 2 wins (one cancelled)
SDSU - 6, 3 wins
FRES - 5, 5 wins
WYO - 6, 4 wins
CSU - 2, 0 wins

Weeks in AP top 25:
BSU - 35
SDSU - 18
FRES - 12
WYO - 0 (did receive votes at times)
CSU - 0 (I don't think they ever even received votes)

Obviously, BSU is above everybody here but Wyoming is within spitting distance of fresno and SDSU ... and you only have to squint a little bit. What is crazy is, the gap between CSU and Wyoming is bigger than the gap between Wyoming and BSU in terms of football success though...yet they get mentioned as conference expansion targets and finally are included with BSU when the rubber meets the road. I don't know how many conclusions (if any) can be drawn from this...but it at least raises some questions.

If you change nothing else and just swap Wyoming's football success with Fresno or SDSU's over the last 8 years...do we get the invite and does CSU get left out? I think it's as likely as not that would have been the case...no way to prove it either way but if you are willing to take CSU who has been quite a ways behind Wyoming in football success for some time now, it is at least reasonable to think that doing a bit better on the field would not have moved the needle.

Am I just crazy to think that football success just is not what is being sought after in these conference realignment shenanigans? I would have definitely had more fun as a cowboys fan if we had been on the level of SDSU and Fresno for the past 8 years but It doesn't seem unreasonable to think we would be right where we are today even if that were the case. This means that no matter what (within reasonable bounds) Burman could/should have done...Wyoming was not getting included with the teams that Boise State was inevitably going to leave with.

Where I'm going with this is that I will grant to anybody that Burman sucks and that it was possible to have done better over that time frame ... Bohl was a successful hire by any metric and probably was Burmans saving move since everything else he did really didn't pan out. Burman has made three football hires...Christensen, Bohl and Sawvell. I would say that the Christensen hiring was fair at best. The elevation of Sawvell looks to be disastrous and should cost him his job. Even if we can't move on from Sawvel after this season for buyout reasons, Burman should be asked to step away from the AD position. The most impactful thing Burman can do is hire/fire coaches and he has screwed that part up in a big way with Sawvell. The Burman defenders that ragtimejoe1 sees everywhere (and still have not come out of the woodwork) could say that "well...good coaches just don't want to come to Wyoming", and they would probably be right but that is still the job of the AD. Burman hired a bad enough coach that he should be removed..end of discussion. If you want to rage against somebody or something about Wyoming getting left behind by the likes of CSU.....Burman isn't high enough on the ladder to be worth your time....probably nobody is...maybe the governor.

If you read this and think this is a defense of Burman...then you are an idiot. Burman could suck at everything an AD trivially does and hire above average to great coaches and he would be loved. The problem with him is that his hires range from meh (DC) to disastrous (Sawvell, Edwards). NIL and the NCAA transfer rules relaxing along with so many other things are not making that job easier but that's the job...at least it pays well....we have to move on and find somebody that can get good coach's in Laramie. That is it.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

We get it. Little ole WYO just can't do anything no matter who is hired anywhere within the ad.

Do your same analysis with ad budget, ad budget increase in past 5 and 10 years, attendance in revenue sports, and championships across sports.

Now who is in charge of budgets and revenue?

 

[307bball]

We get it. Little ole WYO just can't do anything no matter who is hired anywhere within the ad.

Do your same analysis with ad budget, ad budget increase in past 5 and 10 years, attendance in revenue sports, and championships across sports.

Now who is in charge of budgets and revenue?

Well ... Up until CSU got the invite....this was an interesting academic discussion....but now some real results are in. CSU is leaving Wyoming behind. If you draw a circle around the athletic programs of both institutions ... I see wyoming as very competitive with CSU and better than them in terms of the 800 lb gorilla represented by football success. I assume you see it similarly? To address your questions quickly, I think our AD budget is in the low 40's and CSU's is about the same...but feel free to educate me on that. Just a quick google search for home attendance last year shows Wyoming with football and men's basketball attendance total of 307,758 against 273,835 for CSU. In terms of championships in the entire athletic program....Wyoming is near the bottom if not the bottom of the conference right? CSU seems like they always have a champion here or there in other sports...Assume they are not at the top but they are likely higher than us.

All of the above to say...if you just constrain your view to the athletic departments at UW and CSU and try to find why they were invited and we were not....you will end up confused.

I will re-iterate...Burman is responsible for the results of the people he brings in to lead the various competitive sports teams at UW. The only reason he has lasted this long is because Bohl was a good hire. Now that he has whiffed on Bohl's replacement he should be let go...I don't hear an argument to the contrary .... definitely not from you.

I'm trying to seperate the Burman hate from what is going on when a program like CSU is joined with BSU, Fresno, and SDSU and Wyoming is left out. Hate Burman all you want but it's obscuring the actual causes of Wyoming being left out.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Seriously do the analysis I suggested then sort mwc in each of those categories. It will become more clear to you.

 

[MrTitleist]

Total wins in the last 8 non-covid years:
BSU - 68
SDSU - 61
FRES - 56
WY - 53
CSU - 32

Conference Championship games (again, non covid years):
BSU - 5 appearances, 3 victories
SDSU - 2 appearances, 1 victory
FRES - 3 appearances, 2 victories
WYO - 1 appearance, 0 victories
CSU - 0 appearances, 0 victories

Bowls (appearances, wins):
BSU - 6, 2 wins (one cancelled)
SDSU - 6, 3 wins
FRES - 5, 5 wins
WYO - 6, 4 wins
CSU - 2, 0 wins

Weeks in AP top 25:
BSU - 35
SDSU - 18
FRES - 12
WYO - 0 (did receive votes at times)
CSU - 0 (I don't think they ever even received votes)

Interesting stats. Thanks for posting them.

 

[307bball]

Seriously do the analysis I suggested then sort mwc in each of those categories. It will become more clear to you.

Were my numbers not correct on attendance and AD budget?

I'm not surprised that UNM, Hawaii or Nevada or other MWC also-rans didn't get invited...I don't think anybody is. I'm trying to find the gap between Wyoming and CSU that explains how they get included in the group with SDSU, Fresno, and BSU....I don't think athletics explains it...after all in those categories...Wyoming is on par or better with the exception of maybe overall athletic department championships but nobody cares about that in terms of conference realignment right? Unless it's in football or what SDSU has done in mens bball.

 

[Wyoklaelk]

I like the football success comparison. I liken it to bSU's football success has allowed them to expand into the pac. All these schools had goals and worked towards them to get into better conferences. We do not. If we are competing in D1, goals have to be to build the program to get into the playoffs.

Narrative needs to change that we have higher ambitions, hire the guy that tells a better story and can negotiate with a better vision for WYO.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Were my numbers not correct on attendance and AD budget?

I'm not surprised that UNM, Hawaii or Nevada or other MWC also-rans didn't get invited...I don't think anybody is. I'm trying to find the gap between Wyoming and CSU that explains how they get included in the group with SDSU, Fresno, and BSU....I don't think athletics explains it...after all in those categories...Wyoming is on par or better with the exception of maybe overall athletic department championships but nobody cares about that in terms of conference realignment right? Unless it's in football or what SDSU has done in mens bball.

Here's a main press for budget:

Breaking Down 2022–23 Mountain West Revenue & Expenses

Posted on June 19, 2023 By SuperWest Sports Staff USA TODAY recently released its annual database of athletic department revenue, expenses, and profit/loss for the Mountain West and other college…

medium.com

Here's football attendance

MW football attendance analysis: Biggest risers and fallers year-over-year

College football games hosted by Mountain West schools drew their largest average home crowds since 2017, albeit with a caveat. This year's non-Hawaii games d

nevadasportsnet.com

Here's a budget database you can explore

Mountain West Conference | College Athletics Database

knightnewhousedata.org

You can also ask source of revenue. My suspicion is we are more subsidized by university general funds, state line item budgets, and student fees than many of those accepted.

Then you can look at student population (out of Burman's control). It wouldn't surprise me if politics plays a small role (out of Burman's control). Markets perhaps (also out of Burman's control).

We are pretty much dead last in ad performance overall (at least bottom 1/3rd).

It's not just football performance which is and has always been obvious.

 

[307bball]

We are pretty much dead last in ad performance overall (at least bottom 1/3rd).

I assume you mean in terms of results in all competitions? The budget numbers are always different depending on the source.... I just looked at the collegian.com that reported CSU's budget to be 41.9m in 2023... They must be excluding something.

Anyways... It's just interesting to me that in the one area that Burman has some control over that we can all agree on (football success), Wyoming is clearly better than CSU. If it's a no brainer to include CSU in the tier above Wyoming (and evidently it is... If media pieces about it are any any indication), then CSU is doing something else correctly that UW is unable or unwilling to do. It's evident at this point that you don't need to any good at football to be invited. Is CSU so good at all other sports that it made any difference... Doubtful.

What am I missing ragtime? Isn't the observation that Burman doesn't hire good coaches enough to justify firing him. The one thing Wyoming can do is pay a lot and get good coaches.... We can't build stadiums or goose the economy or build a larger airport in Laramie. We probably can't even keep the few good recruits we get... but we sure as hell can get better coaches than Burman brings in. Bohl was a good coach and if Sawvell was 3-0 right now we would all think that Burman made the right decision and we still would not be getting an invitation.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

I assume you mean in terms of results in all competitions? The budget numbers are always different depending on the source.... I just looked at the collegian.com that reported CSU's budget to be 41.9m in 2023... They must be excluding something.

Anyways... It's just interesting to me that in the one area that Burman has some control over that we can all agree on (football success), Wyoming is clearly better than CSU. If it's a no brainer to include CSU in the tier above Wyoming (and evidently it is... If media pieces about it are any any indication), then CSU is doing something else correctly that UW is unable or unwilling to do. It's evident at this point that you don't need to any good at football to be invited. Is CSU so good at all other sports that it made any difference... Doubtful.

What am I missing ragtime? Isn't the observation that Burman doesn't hire good coaches enough to justify firing him. The one thing Wyoming can do is pay a lot and get good coaches.... We can't build stadiums or goose the economy or build a larger airport in Laramie. We probably can't even keep the few good recruits we get... but we sure as hell can get better coaches than Burman brings in. Bohl was a good coach and if Sawvell was 3-0 right now we would all think that Burman made the right decision and we still would not be getting an invitation.

Budget is a big one. As far as I know the knights link is the standard. 64 mill vs 48 mill or so. Add in their better attendance even in down year compared with one of our best attendance years. Our non-football sports perform near bottom in the mwc.

Football was decent but not great. In other words not good enough to overcome 16 mill in budget differences. There wasn't a lot of real positives to point to in terms of performance or financial commitment.

Then add in market, small student population, and perhaps politics and we don't check many boxes.

Here's the deal with your position on Burman. It's his job to make us check the boxes. Being a heart surgeon would be hard. If a heart surgeon had 99% of his patients die, I sure couldn't tell him exactly what he's doing wrong but I can damn sure tell something is wrong. This goes for the WYO AD. Athletic department performance and revenue generation are on him.

 

[rocket city poke]

This whole saga has a lot of facets to analyze. One of the recurring sentiments I have heard is that the success that Boise St has had is unrealistic as a goal for Wyoming...that BSU is a one of one situation and their success since 2000 or so is a lightning strike level event in that it would be impossible to replicate. I think I agree with that. So, given that BSU level of success is off the table, what level of success gets Wyoming into the cool kids club? If the answer is that we would have had to have had BSU level success....we have already ruled that out.

Let's look at the 4 teams that have announced their departure to the Pac-xx alongside Wyoming....

Total wins in the last 8 non-covid years:
BSU - 68
SDSU - 61
FRES - 56
WY - 53
CSU - 32

Conference Championship games (again, non covid years):
BSU - 5 appearances, 3 victories
SDSU - 2 appearances, 1 victory
FRES - 3 appearances, 2 victories
WYO - 1 appearance, 0 victories
CSU - 0 appearances, 0 victories

Bowls (appearances, wins):
BSU - 6, 2 wins (one cancelled)
SDSU - 6, 3 wins
FRES - 5, 5 wins
WYO - 6, 4 wins
CSU - 2, 0 wins

Weeks in AP top 25:
BSU - 35
SDSU - 18
FRES - 12
WYO - 0 (did receive votes at times)
CSU - 0 (I don't think they ever even received votes)

Obviously, BSU is above everybody here but Wyoming is within spitting distance of fresno and SDSU ... and you only have to squint a little bit. What is crazy is, the gap between CSU and Wyoming is bigger than the gap between Wyoming and BSU in terms of football success though...yet they get mentioned as conference expansion targets and finally are included with BSU when the rubber meets the road. I don't know how many conclusions (if any) can be drawn from this...but it at least raises some questions.

If you change nothing else and just swap Wyoming's football success with Fresno or SDSU's over the last 8 years...do we get the invite and does CSU get left out? I think it's as likely as not that would have been the case...no way to prove it either way but if you are willing to take CSU who has been quite a ways behind Wyoming in football success for some time now, it is at least reasonable to think that doing a bit better on the field would not have moved the needle.

Am I just crazy to think that football success just is not what is being sought after in these conference realignment shenanigans? I would have definitely had more fun as a cowboys fan if we had been on the level of SDSU and Fresno for the past 8 years but It doesn't seem unreasonable to think we would be right where we are today even if that were the case. This means that no matter what (within reasonable bounds) Burman could/should have done...Wyoming was not getting included with the teams that Boise State was inevitably going to leave with.

Where I'm going with this is that I will grant to anybody that Burman sucks and that it was possible to have done better over that time frame ... Bohl was a successful hire by any metric and probably was Burmans saving move since everything else he did really didn't pan out. Burman has made three football hires...Christensen, Bohl and Sawvell. I would say that the Christensen hiring was fair at best. The elevation of Sawvell looks to be disastrous and should cost him his job. Even if we can't move on from Sawvel after this season for buyout reasons, Burman should be asked to step away from the AD position. The most impactful thing Burman can do is hire/fire coaches and he has screwed that part up in a big way with Sawvell. The Burman defenders that ragtimejoe1 sees everywhere (and still have not come out of the woodwork) could say that "well...good coaches just don't want to come to Wyoming", and they would probably be right but that is still the job of the AD. Burman hired a bad enough coach that he should be removed..end of discussion. If you want to rage against somebody or something about Wyoming getting left behind by the likes of CSU.....Burman isn't high enough on the ladder to be worth your time....probably nobody is...maybe the governor.

If you read this and think this is a defense of Burman...then you are an idiot. Burman could suck at everything an AD trivially does and hire above average to great coaches and he would be loved. The problem with him is that his hires range from meh (DC) to disastrous (Sawvell, Edwards). NIL and the NCAA transfer rules relaxing along with so many other things are not making that job easier but that's the job...at least it pays well....we have to move on and find somebody that can get good coach's in Laramie. That is it.

I don't post any more, but part of the driver is Oregon State which is controlling a lot of this. They have a an elite baseball program that doesn't have a home. I'm of the opinion that the schools they targeted either had top flight baseball programs (SDSU and Fresno) or are working on getting them Boise. I don't think CSU was, but CU has no baseball program and i'm thinking there was at least a conversation around them working toward getting a baseball program. UW has 0% chance of bringing back baseball.

 

[doreno5]

I don't post any more, but part of the driver is Oregon State which is controlling a lot of this. They have a an elite baseball program that doesn't have a home. I'm of the opinion that the schools they targeted either had top flight baseball programs (SDSU and Fresno) or are working on getting them Boise. I don't think CSU was, but CU has no baseball program and i'm thinking there was at least a conversation around them working toward getting a baseball program. UW has 0% chance of bringing back baseball.

Wyoming had decent baseball program until 1996. I believe it was cut for budgetary reasons. As an aside years ago I went to Oakland A's batting practice and spoke with Reggie Jackson. When I mentioned I was from Wyoming he shook his head and shivered as if he was cold and said he remembered playing in Laramie. Given his expression I do not think he enjoyed it.

 

[ZapPoke]

I thought they dropped baseball cuz they needed to add another women’s sport

 

[doreno5]

I thought they dropped baseball cuz they needed to add another women’s sport

And needed funding to do it. That and Title IX compliance.

 

[307bball]

Budget is a big one. As far as I know the knights link is the standard. 64 mill vs 48 mill or so. Add in their better attendance even in down year compared with one of our best attendance years. Our non-football sports perform near bottom in the mwc.

Football was decent but not great. In other words not good enough to overcome 16 mill in budget differences. There wasn't a lot of real positives to point to in terms of performance or financial commitment.

Then add in market, small student population, and perhaps politics and we don't check many boxes.

Here's the deal with your position on Burman. It's his job to make us check the boxes. Being a heart surgeon would be hard. If a heart surgeon had 99% of his patients die, I sure couldn't tell him exactly what he's doing wrong but I can damn sure tell something is wrong. This goes for the WYO AD. Athletic department performance and revenue generation are on him.

I will grant you that non revenue sports performance sucks at Wyoming.... But are they making any difference for anybody in conference realignment?

Other than that, I think you and I agree on what constitutes success for the Wyoming AD. Wyoming football succeeding or failing will pretty much drive that though. Get the football program right and the rest of the problems in the athletic department get a lot easier to fix. The inverse of this is not true.

If you are with me on that premise.... Then I would like to cut through some of this discussion and say that there is one activity that Burman has an outsized influence upon that drives revenue, donations, engagement and everything else.... Finding winning coaches. Take the reseating debacle that happened with the AA remodel as an example. Imagine that Linder had made back to back sweet 16's and we were dominating the MW.... Probably some complaining about it but the place would be rocking and money would be flowing. The problem is we are not winning.

Having really struggled in football for most of this century has meant that there is rampant apathy towards Wyoming athletics outside of Wyoming. Looking forward, if Wyoming is too climb out of this hole it will be on the back of real football success... If Burman or the next AD accomplishes that, it will be worth nearly any trade off. We have to have a Paul Roach or Joe tiller level guy at the helm at this point. And probably a couple in a row since they will move on if they are that good. That's the AD's job.... Get that guy. If you don't... All of the other stuff that you are pointing out will drag the department into oblivion.

 

[Itsux2beaewe]

It seems the only driver to the MW teams selected is media markets which I still don’t get. Wyoming viewership is higher than CSewe. Attendance is higher. The only thing that reconciles with me is with CU leaving the PAC the belief is Colorado viewers which still doesn’t make sense because of AF.

 

[OrediggerPoke]

It seems the only driver to the MW teams selected is media markets which I still don’t get. Wyoming viewership is higher than CSewe. Attendance is higher. The only thing that reconciles with me is with CU leaving the PAC the belief is Colorado viewers which still doesn’t make sense because of AF.

This is not the only driver at all. Even Burman acknowledges other drivers in his interview.

Athletic dollars, facility investments, non-revenue sports, transportation access, and even state political issues all play a role. Right or wrong - Wyoming gets dinged by these conference committees for things such as the elimination of all DEI programs at the University. Laramie even gets dinged for its airport infrastructure.

 

[McPeachy]

This is not the only driver at all. Even Burman acknowledges other drivers in his interview.

Athletic dollars, facility investments, non-revenue sports, transportation access, and even state political issues all play a role. Right or wrong - Wyoming gets dinged by these conference committees for things such as the elimination of all DEI programs at the University. Laramie even gets dinged for its airport infrastructure.

Interesting, some of that doesn't make sense. DEI, lmao. Ever seen Fort Collins airport? I love the trailer terminal. Facilities? Above and beyond all MW teams in a lot of areas.

 

[OrediggerPoke]

Interesting, some of that doesn't make sense. DEI, lmao. Ever seen Fort Collins airport? I love the trailer terminal. Facilities? Above and beyond all MW teams in a lot of areas.

In one of the older interviews, Burman was discussing DEN being treated as the home airport for CSU but not Wyoming based on distance. I don’t recall all the specifics of that discussion but DEN to Fort Collins is like a 45 minute drive and a much longer trip to Laramie.

We can no longer argue that we have a nicer football stadium. CSU’s is nicer (as bad as an investment as it may be).

 

[McPeachy]

In one of the older interviews, Burman was discussing DEN being treated as the home airport for CSU but not Wyoming based on distance. I don’t recall all the specifics of that discussion but DEN to Fort Collins is like a 45 minute drive and a much longer trip to Laramie.

We can no longer argue that we have a nicer football stadium. CSU’s is nicer (as bad as an investment as it may be).

I drive that route about every other week. It is 1 hour to FC from Laramie, and 1 hour from FC to DIA. 1 hour is not a make & break IMO, but hey, what did Wyoming do to dispel that? Nothing. Fact of the matter is that Wyoming should have promoted, "close enough to big city, without big city issues" for about 20 years now, but crickets. I love the fact that people that live in Laramie have a "small town protected life" (all things compared) but with a 2 hour drive, you can see major concerts, sports, arts, and travel, without the bullshit that comes with it - including living in Colorado.

Agree the sheep pen stadium is nicer than the War, but nothing else is, so advantage Wyoming. I would also like to take this time to announce that the War re-seating was just as much a shit show as the AA, and it looks like we went on the cheap again. Just stupid.